GOP dilemma: Tea Party scoffs at global warming, but most other Republicans don’t

Sunday

May 11, 2014 at 6:10 PMMay 11, 2014 at 9:06 PM

As we all know by now, the Tea Party movement is the tail that wags the Republican dog.

Halfway reasonable politicians in the GOP are forced to play patty-cake with the kooks for fear of being challenged in primary elections. Yeah, it’s a cowardly phenomenon, but it’s also a matter of political self-preservation. Bravery is for losers.

You see, Tea Party zealots are more likely than comparatively civilized conservatives to vote in GOP primaries. So survival sometimes requires going along to get along.

But there’s another potential pitfall in all of this: A Republican candidate who echoes the Tea Party line, even if only reluctantly, runs the risk of moving too far to the right to suit the general electorate.

This overall dilemma arises with regard to the issue of climate change, as Doyle McManus EXPLAINS:

Polls have found that most Americans are worried about global warming, except for one group — tea party conservatives. A Pew Research Poll conducted last year found that only 25% of tea party adherents believe climate change is real, against 61% of non-tea party Republicans (and 84% of Democrats).

That puts the GOP in a bind, caught between its most zealous conservative supporters and the broader majorities it’ll need to win elections.

More worrisome for the GOP, younger voters are even more convinced that climate change is a big problem — and they’re going to be around longer than their grandparents.

And, remarkably, almost two-thirds of Americans, including about half of Republicans, favor stricter limits on emissions from power plants, the centerpiece of Obama’s regulatory agenda…

In the not-too-distant past, the Republican Party’s platform actually listed global warming as a national problem and cited “human activity” among its causes…

Now only a few defiant Republican moderates still argue for policies to counter climate change.

As we all know by now, the Tea Party movement is the tail that wags the Republican dog.

Halfway reasonable politicians in the GOP are forced to play patty-cake with the kooks for fear of being challenged in primary elections. Yeah, it’s a cowardly phenomenon, but it’s also a matter of political self-preservation. Bravery is for losers.

You see, Tea Party zealots are more likely than comparatively civilized conservatives to vote in GOP primaries. So survival sometimes requires going along to get along.

But there’s another potential pitfall in all of this: A Republican candidate who echoes the Tea Party line, even if only reluctantly, runs the risk of moving too far to the right to suit the general electorate.

This overall dilemma arises with regard to the issue of climate change, as Doyle McManus EXPLAINS:

Polls have found that most Americans are worried about global warming, except for one group — tea party conservatives. A Pew Research Poll conducted last year found that only 25% of tea party adherents believe climate change is real, against 61% of non-tea party Republicans (and 84% of Democrats).

That puts the GOP in a bind, caught between its most zealous conservative supporters and the broader majorities it’ll need to win elections.

More worrisome for the GOP, younger voters are even more convinced that climate change is a big problem — and they’re going to be around longer than their grandparents.

And, remarkably, almost two-thirds of Americans, including about half of Republicans, favor stricter limits on emissions from power plants, the centerpiece of Obama’s regulatory agenda…

In the not-too-distant past, the Republican Party’s platform actually listed global warming as a national problem and cited “human activity” among its causes…

Now only a few defiant Republican moderates still argue for policies to counter climate change.